What can a dissident body do in capoeira?

Abstract

This article investigates how gender and sexuality performativity is experienced by LGBTQIA+ individuals in the practice of capoeira, analyzing the intersections of sexuality, race, class, and precariousness. In its third stage, the research employed structured interviews with four LGBTQIA+ capoeira practitioners who also teach in their respective groups, located in different Brazilian states. The analysis of their narratives reveals that these bodies experience specific forms of exclusion and silencing, often being pressured to conceal their identities as a strategy for survival. It is also shown that capoeira, although rooted in an ancestral matrix of resistance, reproduces hegemonic norms that hinder the recognition and advancement of dissident subjects. The study concludes that strengthening dissident performativity in capoeira depends on the creation of more plural spaces and on confronting the symbolic and material hierarchies that sustain historical exclusions. By engaging with the urgencies of the present, the practice of capoeira can reaffirm its emancipatory potential, as long as it opens space for a diversity of bodies and knowledges.